Sunday, March 7, 2010

Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein

Cosmic Combat
The Mobile Infantry of the startling twenty-second century attracts young and eager-to-serve Johnnie Rico. He enters basic training as a naive youth who must learn quickly how to cope with every soldier's problems of courage, discipline, and loyalty.

But he barely learns the value of freedom before he finds he must fight for it bravely - in fantastic interplanetary battles against he most incredible adversaries of the future.

I've read Starship Troopers before and loved it then as much as I loved it this time around. This is a book that has been called Heinlein's best novel, and I think it may well be that. A simple but effective story that fifty years later is just as relevant as it was when the book was first published. Like many of Heinlein's novels, Starship Troopers has nothing in it that dates it, the story is as readable and fresh as ever. There's no dates given in the story to limit it.

The characters are what make this story. Which seems to be the case with most of Heinlein's books. I know I just said that about the characters in my review of Starman Jones, but it's just as true here.

There are some points in Starship Troopers that are interesting to think about, such as the political structure they've come up with, and a few others that make me cringe: namely the methods of training a puppy. Guess it's the time span between the book's first publishing and now.

Some reviews I've seen for this book spend some time talking about the various movie versions of Starship Troopers. Not having seen them, I wonder how good they are. I'll admit I'm more of a purist towards the books when I've seen movies made of books. So, what do you think of the movies made of Starship Troopers.

About Me

I love books, especially science fiction/fantasy and history books.
Primarily, I read fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction and
non-fiction history books.
As of Spring 2009, I now have my B.A. with my major Classical Studies and my minor in Medieval Studies.
I am a professional back-of-the-book indexer specializing in Classical and Medieval Studies and also in general history. I am quite happy as well to work on most general interest subjects as well. My website is at quillandinkindexing.comWhen I write about the Kobo E-reader, it is information gleaned from my personal experience. I am not affiliated with Kobo in any way.